Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
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Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
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Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#2The Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies for over 2000 years, surely they must have inspected ancient mummified bodies, even if religiously taboo, maybe when grave robbers broke into a tomb, and adapted their practices accordingly.
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#3x-files theme intensifies
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#4The Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies for over 2000 years, surely they must have inspected ancient mummified bodies, even if religiously taboo, maybe when grave robbers broke into a tomb, and adapted their practices accordingly.
How do people know it was taboo for them?
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#5The Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies for over 2000 years, surely they must have inspected ancient mummified bodies, even if religiously taboo, maybe when grave robbers broke into a tomb, and adapted their practices accordingly.
I don't doubt that there's been scientific research into the best way to mummify a body; they wouldn't have done all of the steps on a whim / guess. But we're talking about a tradition spanning hundreds, if not thousands of years here. Mummification or otherwise preserving a body goes back a long time - the oldest form of intentional mummification goes back to 5000 BC, or 7000 years ago (according to wikipedia), so even then they had developed a tradition and the knowledge of preserving a body already.
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#6x-files theme intensifies
or Prometheus. Seriously, never touch anything that looks like black goo, especially in ancient setting.
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#7If they had said mastic I would have been there like a shot. Mastic and gum-arabic were used extensively in the ancient world.
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#8The Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies for over 2000 years, surely they must have inspected ancient mummified bodies, even if religiously taboo, maybe when grave robbers broke into a tomb, and adapted their practices accordingly.
I don't doubt that there's been scientific research into the best way to mummify a body; they wouldn't have done all of the steps on a whim / guess. But we're talking about a tradition spanning hundreds, if not thousands of years here. Mummification or otherwise preserving a body goes back a long time - the oldest form of intentional mummification goes back to 5000 BC, or 7000 years ago (according to wikipedia), so e…
To put things in perspective we are closer time-wise to Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt than he was to the building of the Great Pyramids. Ancient Egyptian culture was immensely old, even at that time, and was basically continuous for the whole period.
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#9I love the clash of deeply detailed language like "we vaporized the samples and used ‘Gas Chromatography – Mass Spectrometry (GC-MS)’ and separated the molecules" with them using 'black goo' as a term.
I am fascinated that the goo wasn't just a random choice for mummification but apparently had spiritual/cultural significance. Never knew too much about Egyptian culture but this being a sort of 'regeneration' symbol, perhaps tied into some sort of afterlife beliefs, that's amazing.
Re: Ancient Egyptian coffins and mystery of ‘black goo’
#10The Ancient Egyptians mummified bodies for over 2000 years, surely they must have inspected ancient mummified bodies, even if religiously taboo, maybe when grave robbers broke into a tomb, and adapted their practices accordingly.
How do people know it was taboo for them?
Why is it not taboo any more?